It's worth noting that the Holy Fire glyph is changing so that it is no longer an instant ability, thus removing it as an option for on the move healing. You take Mindbender and lose an on the move heal in return for 10-11% mana/minute. Or, you take Power Word: Solace, gain an on the move heal and a realistic max of somewhere between 11,3% and 14% mana if used 5 times/min. You can drop to 4/minute and still not have it be patently worse than Mindbender if you don't have Evangelism stacked all the time (Which you won't, if nothing else for Archangel use). Personally I'm going to use it even if I can only guarantee 3 casts per minute. The on the move heal is just that valuable, and as we move up a tier, I'm betting I'll be able to live with 1-2% less mana/minute with a higher tier of gear.

I'm also wondering if standard 3-min CD Shadowfiend has been put into this calculation? If it hasn't, Power Word: Solace seems to be the clear winner with mana returns close to Mindbender on a minute to minute basis, and an extra influx from Shadowfiend every 3 minute.

Shadowfiend is part of the calculation when determining how much mana per minute Mindbender provides. I did say the change makes Solace an attractive choice for disc. As for me personally, on the fights where I have shown to use Holy Fire 4x per minute I will definitely be considering it but in all honesty, I doubt I would really miss not being able to hit it in those circumstances. Plus I really dislike losing damage with how my raid operates but that is a personal distinction.

Well, it's not like he's wrong, people will obviously play the superior spec. The big question is whether they agree with "you can always go Disc, so shut up about Holy" which always appears in any healing discussion concerning Priests.

Or if they'll get lazy and just bump Chakra to 35% in some random hotfix.

We are going to nerf Divine Aegis for Prayer of Healing, but also lower the cost of Power Word: Shield (for Disc only) and increase the healing and damage of Penance. In 25 raids, Disc is using Prayer of Healing almost exclusively and we don't think the Spirit Shell change will be sufficient to change that. We actually want Disc to get back to using PW:Shield a little more, along with Penance. Disc's throughput is overall too strong in PvE, not even counting the fact that absorbs are often more beneficial than heals.

As expected, but tbh, they still dont have a single clue what to do with us..
Isnt this just gonne ressurect the bubble spammers? :-s

Or, you take Power Word: Solace, gain an on the move heal and a realistic max of somewhere between 11,3% and 14% mana if used 5 times/min. You can drop to 4/minute and still not have it be patently worse than Mindbender if you don't have Evangelism stacked all the time (Which you won't, if nothing else for Archangel use).

I wish I could keep the instant holy fire and from darkness comes light, it made atoment interesting to have a free direct heal proc of off it.

Oh garharghroargrowl... help me, I can't take this "Chakra is a resource" BS. Bump forumthreads and keep Twitter GC about it. Heeeeelp...
Blizzard ows hpriests this now. They really do need to listen to the players on this matter.

By "resource", he means limiter. And it is. As such it is doing its job. It is keeping holy down. All working as intended.

What we should aim for is to explain, ad infinitum and in using very small words, why the current chakra is bloody damned annoying.

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Holy (used) to be all about being flexible. Large toolbox. Many different playstyles. No two hpriests played alike.
Matching best heal to the job and maximizing healing per mana was the key factor to success.
This required quick thinking and pattern matching abilities, which was unique to the spec.
Lateral thinking was always rewarded. This made Holy the most fun healer to play.

With the current chakra system, half your toolbox is at any time 'wrong' (which half depends on stance) and should only be used in emergency situations. It is WRONG to heal that tank while in sanc stance, unless the other healers simply cannot keep him up. It is WRONG to cast that PoH on the raid in serenity stance, unless the other healers cannot handle it. While in a chakra stance, you should not cast off-stance heals unless you can really avoid it. This maximizes your efficiency, which is still very important to holy. But unlike earlier, it means you are left with using only half your arsenal.

In serenity this means the priest is left spamming two buttons over and over (Gheal/Renew) only interrupted by HW: Serenity.
In sanctuary, this means the priest is left spamming one button over and over (PoH) only interrupted by CoH.
Inbetween, regardless of stance, you will mix in Prayer of Mending when desireable, and weave in a big cooldown when necessary. But preferrably switching to Sanc before doing so if possible.

But that's what holypriesting is with chakra. Hit one or two buttons over and over, only interrupted by another spell every 10 sec. Sure you can cross-stance heal. Sometimes it is necessary. But if you do it a lot, your efficiency sinks like a stone; because a holypriest in offstance is just not a much better healer than a shadowpriest. At the end of the day that just looks bad and mana is too tight to waste healing like that repeatedly. So Whenever the other healers can cover that job, they should. And you shouldn't.

New holy contains very little pattern matching. No lateral thinking. No fun. Chakra really turned the spec crappy. It's a two button spec.

GC can call it a resource all he wants. I for one just see a horribly designed limiter.

Here is a thought experiment.
Tell warrior tanks tomorrow that they are being redesigned so that they can only generate rage in berserker stance, and only mitigate damage in protection stance. That's not going to go down well. Holypriests currently feel equally restricted thanks to chakra.

Funny... when reading your first list Danner that's exactly what I see Chakra doing to the spec. I also don't see heals outside of Chakra being wrong.. you just have to choose which side needs more oomph: aoe or single target?

Take Heroic Elite Protectors... at the start the debuff is only on a few people, of which, rolling renew on them & the tanks is the best bet. Does that mean it's wrong and useless to use CoH in addition to those spells? No. It means that you need more out of your renews right now than your CoH so you focus on Serenity. Once damage ramps up, this changes. Renew no longer cuts it and you swap to aoe. Does this mean that you never cast renew? Flash heal? Greater heal? Binding heal? Hell no. Those spells are still needed at times to save lives. It's not wrong. You just don't get as much HPM/HPS out of them, but they sure as hell aren't wrong.

Being a part of a team means sacrificing HPS/HPM sometimes to save lives. That is what healing is about, and always has been about.

Two button spec? Maybe you just aren't playing it properly because I definitely do not, and have not ever, seen it as a two button spec. You want a two button spec play disc.

I think everyone needs to just give up the fight against Chakra and embrace it the best you can. It's there. There's nothing we can do about it. Maximize it instead of saying you're forced to press two buttons.

I will concede that the world is by no means as black-and-white as I made it out in the previous post. If you cast 85% on-stance heals and 15% off-stance heals, that's still making you heal better than a shadowpriest overall. No questions about it. But each and every one of those 15% off stance heals will make you have to question yourself - am I being mana efficient? Could I avoid this inefficiency? Maybe I should have switched to sanc before casting that Halo? if I am in sanctuary stance, do I really need to throw renew on that tank, or can I reasonably assume that the paladins will cover it? If I am in sanc mode, do I really need to cast that PoH, or can I just wait for the renews to tick it off?

I for one end up playing the efficiency game. This is mostly because I tend to overspend mana, and need to always think efficiency to counter this problem. As such, it is wrong for me to be inefficient needlessly. Of course, its by definition not a needless waste of mana if it actually helps out. That CoH will help a bunch even if you are in serenity stance and the party was just hit by a big crush! It is not wrong to cast off stance heals if it reduces the chance of deaths!

That's not the point either. The problem is when those off-stance heals aren't at least reasonably necessary. That is when it is wrong to use them. And at that point, the spec turns into a two button spec, because I shouldn't be using the off-heals. At that point chakra is limiting my options, reducing the involvement of the spec. It's good to have the option of healing off-stance, and of course it saves lives when I have to use that option. But the way Chakra works, you will always end up having to hate yourself for having to take that path without it being necessary.

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Take garalon for example. It's so easy to go sanc-mode and spam PoH/Cascade until your eyes bleed out. As Holy, this makes for ridiculous meter whoring, and clueless raidleaders congratulating the holypriest(s) in question on a job well done. I can spend all my mana this way easily, and know that I got the biggest bang possible for my bucks.

But there is more damage going on in this fight. Those tanks will take furious swipe hits, and they need healing too. Should I ignore them and just keep on with my meterwhoring? The answer is probably yes. Unless the stars align and lots of damage coming in at the same time, I really shouldn't be throwing out many heals on them. That's for the other healers to do. I will focus on the raid, and I will do a brilliant job at it. Why should I waste my precious mana on seriously gimped tank healing?

"Because the tank will die otherwise" is the only valid argument. It's a damned good one too, but it's in no way always applying.

And when it is not, limitation is the playstyle I am being pigeonholed into. I sometimes feel like one of those DPS primadonnas. You know the type; the ones who never switch targets, never interrupts anything, never moves out of the fire. That's the playstyle, and I hate it. I want to be flexible. I want to be able to adapt and fit the best heal against the best situation. I want to be creative. But why would I even want to attempt that when it costs me a whooping 25% efficiency?

I do hate the fact that we are inefficient at support tank healing while also aoe healing in this current state. That is my qualm with Chakra.. not so much triage, just tank healing support. As much as I love aoe healing, I've always loved the role of tank healing and that responsibility.

I generally at least try to keep Renew up on the tank most of the time. It is worth it for the small mana cost and "fire/forget" method. I also try to cast Cascade on the tank too.

I, like you Danner, suffer from spending mana too fast. I also have been running extremely low on Spirit for Holy (barely 10k raid buffed)... I did find that when I stopped triage healing in general, and just used things like CoH in those situations that my mana was far better and I could provide more to the overall fight during the big damage moments instead of being so front-loaded and running on fumes by the end. Which is sad, really.

But, I do still love how the spec plays. We have changed, just like every other class. I'm okay with this.

Divine Star and Cascade have interesting gameplay and only enhance the PoH/CoH/PoM spam of our days. I honestly really loved the mace from Deathwing and always positioning myself in the back to maximize that... Divine Star kind of brings that back, but unfortunately with more of a negative when people aren't grouped up. I would like to see something cool like the DW mace again.

While I do enjoy the mana game.. I wish we weren't so far behind other healers with it. I wish we were still the highest, most reliable burst healing like we were in Cata. I would even keep the mana level at what it is now if it meant our burst HPS was higher. Them "fixing" Divine Hymn really hurt the spec more than I think anyone has realized (or no one talks about it?). Holy Word: Sanctuary sucking is also a big damper. I use it on occasion but no where near the amount during DS, which was a really great time for Holy Priests overall. Although we always seem to be the ones that still have to stack Spirit to the end of days while other classes get more throughput stat points. And I digress.

I totally agree with you on the HW: Sanctuary spell. Such a waste of mana to use. I rarely ever use it anymore, unless I happen to be drowing in mana. Which admittedly does not happen a lot

The Divine Hymn change back in Cata was totally needed. The spell sucked compared to the other cooldowns, and it was costing holy raidspots. I will heartily agree with you that the game has become lessened as a result though, since almost all bosses now seem to have one of those "you need to use DH here" phases, which - again - pigeonholes the playstyles. I would much prefer if all those raidwide cooldowns were half the strength.

In fact I agree with most everything you say - my main objection would be that I am not really okay with the changes as I think they are regressions. At least in the case of Chakra.

Back in wotlk, holy was an awesome spec to play. Sure, the raids forced us to be too reliant on Prayer of Healing, and holy's output was pretty crap compared to virtually everyone else. But the expansion labelled as "one button spam" for most healers was the pinnacle of holypriest healing, as you had to cast so many different spells to stay afloat. It rewarded creativity, and pattern matching was extremely important. I specifically remember the otherwise forgettable TOGC raid. I was the bottom of the barrel for healing. But I had a boatload of fun doing it.

Then came chakra, and sure, it was novel at first, since we got new spells to play with and all. But as time grew, the more and more I miss being able to really decide which buttons I should cast. Chakra goes against that so hard since it comes with a 25% performance penalty on the off chakra stance heals. I don't think I would have disliked chakra half as much if it didn't have that passive healing bonus. The serenity renew refresh ability is kinda cool, and I had fun the other day when I challenged myself to simply keeping everyone up with Heal alone (don't try that on heroics). Sanc sort of lacks any value outside the healing bonus, even if the reduced CoH cooldown is okay. But if chakra was all about things like the renew refresh bonus, I think chakra and me could become used to eachother. However, as it is now, it's just driving me nuts.

For me, Holy is the flexible spec. The spec where you can try many things, some which work and some which don't work. It was a swiss pocket knife. Many tools, some which were horrible and some which were awesome in any situation. Picking the right tool was half the fun. But since chakra happened, it feels like the swiss pocket knife was replaced with a screwdriver and a hammer. Those new tools are sturdy and massive and useful by all means, but it gives me two things ways to play: bash nails or screw screws. There isn't much more to life anymore. And I'm not sure that's a good thing at all.

The Divine Hymn "fix" I'm talking about is how it scaled with haste. It received more (and faster) ticks based on haste. Bloodlust/Heroism was just crazy insane with DH. Currently it just makes the cast shorter. This was a huge hit to our burst healing, despite everything else.

I'm also not saying Chakra is great. I would love to see the 25% just go away and keep Chakra around for the specialties... CoH cooldown, Holy Words, Renew refresh. That is honestly a huge fix to the current issue with it, but sadly GC just won't admit it.

The Divine Hymn "fix" I'm talking about is how it scaled with haste. It received more (and faster) ticks based on haste. Bloodlust/Heroism was just crazy insane with DH. Currently it just makes the cast shorter. This was a huge hit to our burst healing, despite everything else.

I'm also not saying Chakra is great. I would love to see the 25% just go away and keep Chakra around for the specialties... CoH cooldown, Holy Words, Renew refresh. That is honestly a huge fix to the current issue with it, but sadly GC just won't admit it.

He did mention adding more spells tied to chakra in the "future" /rolls eyes. I can see it being treated like a "resource" if it didn't have the 25% bonus but adding more spells will be irrelevant to the situation because serentiy is single and sanctuary is aoe if they add more spells those spells will just be single target and aoe respectively and we will feel the need to stance dance whenever there is aoe or single target damage.

There needs to be a fusion of aoe and single spells for both sanctuary and serenity and lose the 25% bonus (just cake it on as a passive for holy for every spell) in order for chakra to be considered a resource.

He did mention adding more spells tied to chakra in the "future" /rolls eyes. I can see it being treated like a "resource" if it didn't have the 25% bonus but adding more spells will be irrelevant to the situation because serentiy is single and sanctuary is aoe if they add more spells those spells will just be single target and aoe respectively and we will feel the need to stance dance whenever there is aoe or single target damage.

They could make it interesting, but they are more likely to create another situation where you gain "Chakra" to cast other spells or gain other abilities that further pigeonholes you into only one way of healing.